|
Frances Xavier Cabrini
(1850-1917)
The first U.S. citizen to become a Roman Catholic saint.
Born in Lodi, Italy. Pope Leo XIII sent her to the United States in 1889 to work among
Italian-Americans. Mother Cabrini opened orphanages, missions, and hospitals. She lived
for a long time in Chicago where she aided Italian immigrants. Became a U.S. citizen in
1909. Canonized in 1946.
Alexander Campbell (1788-1866)
Clergyman who founded a religious group which eventually
developed into the denomination known as the "Disciples of Christ." They are
also often called "Campbellites." He found Bethany College (West Virginia) in
1840. Born in County Antrim, Ireland. Arrived in U.S. in 1809.
Stokely
Carmichael (1941-1998 )
Civil rights leader who was a leading
spokesman for the "Black Power" movement of the late 1960s. Born in Port of
Spain, Trinidad, West Indies. He moved with his family to Harlem in New York City in 1952.
Graduated from Howard University in 1964. As the Chairman of the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee, Carmichael was arrested many times for his civil rights activities
and demonstrations. In 1968-69 he was prime minister of the Black Panther Party. He and
his wife (singer Miriam Makeba) became citizens of Uganda in 1973. Carmichael popularized
the slogan "Hell No We Won’t Go" during the Vietnam War.
Andrew
Carnegie
(1837-1919)
Industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie
made his fortune in the iron and steel industry. In 1899 he merged all his holdings and
formed the Carnegie Steel Company in Pittsburgh. By 1900 the company was producing about a
fourth of all the country’s steel. Wishing to retire, Carnegie sold his company in
1901 to the newly-formed United States Steel Corporation of J.P. Morgan. For his share,
Carnegie personally received $250,000,000, an enormous sum at the time.
Born in Dunfermline, Scotland. After his father, a weaver, lost
his job, the family moved to what is now Pittsburgh in 1848. As an 11-year-old Carnegie
worked in a cotton mill for $1.20 a week. When he was 14 he became a telegraph messenger
boy. Two years later, having taught himself to send and receive messages, he was made a
telegraph operator, at $4 a week. ... He saved money all his life, made advantageous
friendships and wise investments. (In today's dollar, Carnegie was worth about $100
billion -- second only to John D. Rockefeller as the richest Americans of all time.)
And yet, Carnegie was as ruthless as any industrialist during
America's Gilded Age. He stood behind the scenes, for example, as his chief
executive, Henry Clay Frick, crushed organized labor at the steel mills (especially in the
bloody Homestead showdown) by importing cheap workers among Slav, Hungarian, and Italian
immigrants. Carnegie, who encouraged Frick, was obsessed with reducing costs and
treated labor like a commodity. He later got rid of Frick when the two disagreed on
business matters. In public, however, he portrayed himself as a benevolent, progressive
man who boasted that "Mr. Carnegie took no man's job."
Upon his retirement from business, the richest man in the world
started to give money away on a scale never seen before in the United States. He gave away
about $350,000,000 to build libraries, advance education and science, promote world peace,
and to support other cultural and welfare work. Among his philanthropic foundations are
the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the
Carnegie Library, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the
Carnegie Institution of Washington. Yet another of his groups, the Carnegie Hero Fund
Commission, was established for the purpose of rewarding persons who perform heroic deeds
not required of them in their daily lives.
In an essay, "The Gospel of Wealth," Carnegie wrote
that a rich man was merely a trustee of his fortune and that it was his duty to distribute
it "for the improvement of mankind."
Carlos Castaneda
(? - 1998)
Author of "The Teachings of Don Juan, A Yaqui Way of
Knowledge" and eight other best-selling books about Don Juan, a Mexican Yaqui Indian
shaman who uses peyote to induce spiritual visions. Castaneda asserted that Don Juan was a
real person whom he met at a Greyhound bus station in Nogales, Arizona, in the summer of
1960 while Castaneda was researching medicinal plants as a UCLA graduate anthropology
student. Later in life, it was thought by many, including his former wife Margaret,
that Castaneda invented the character of Don Juan. His books sold 8 million copies in 17
languages.
In these books, Castaneda, as Don Juan's apprentice, takes peyote
to break away from ordinary reality. He sees giant insects, flies like a crow, speaks to
cactus, and is chased by inorganic beings in the pursuit of "pure energy."
Castaneda kept to himself most of his life, never granting
interviews and refusing to be photographed or his voice to be recorded. According to his
wife, he grew up in the small Peruvian village of Cajamarca. As a child he walked the
square where herbs were sold and listened to magical stories told by local curanderos
and Quechua Indians.
As a penniless immigrant in Los Angeles, Castaneda worked for the
Mattel Toy co., drove a cab, and worked at a liquor store in order to finance his
education. On his death, Castaneda's estate was worth a reported $20 million to $50
million.
Some people believed Castaneda became a sorcerer with
supernatural "powers." His wife certainly did: "To this day when I
see a crow I say, 'Carlos, is that you?' "
 Subrahmanyan
Chandrasekhar (1910-1995)
NASA's named its orbiting telescope the Chandra X-ray Observatory in honor
of this Indian-American Nobel laureate, one of the foremost
astrophysicists of the 20th century.
Born in Lahore, India. Immigrated to U.S. in 1937
and naturalized in 1953. He was popularly known as Chandra -- which means
"moon" or "luminous" in Sanskrit.
One of his achievements was his demonstration
that there is an upper limit -- now called the Chandrasekhar limit -- to
the mass of a white dwarf star. A white dwarf is the last stage in the
evolution of a star. When the nuclear energy source in the center of a
star such as the sun is exhausted, it collapses to form a white dwarf.
This discovery is basic to much of modern astrophysics, since it shows
that stars much more massive than the sun must either explode or form
black holes.
Chandra was a faculty member of the University of
Chicago. For many years he served as editor of the Astrophysical Journal
and turned it into a first-class publication. In 1983 he was awarded
the Nobel prize for his theoretical studies of the physical processes
important to the structure and evolution of stars.
Louis Chevrolet
(1978-1941)
Carmaker. Born in Switzerland and raised in France. He was a
noted engineer, inventor, designer, builder, and sportsman who had a special slogan:
"Never give up." He built and sold bicycles, designed a wine barrel pump, and
began his official racing career in 1905. He took an active part in Buick’s racing
team and introduced his first Chevrolet automobile in 1911.
Morris
Raphael Cohen (1880-1947)
Philosopher who united pragmatism with logical positivism
and linguistic analysis. He exercised great influence in legal philosophy with such works
as "Reason and Nature," and "Law and the Social Order." Born in Minsk,
Russia; came to the U.S. in 1892.
|
|
In an essay, "The
Gospel of Wealth," Andrew Carnegie wrote that a rich man
was merely a trustee of his fortune and that it was his duty to distribute it "for
the improvement of mankind."
"Tell Mr. Carnegie I'll meet
him in hell, where we are both going."
Henry Clay Frick,
of his former boss.
"Hell no, we won't go."
Stokely Carmichael
"To this day when I see a crow I say, 'Carlos, is
that you?' "
Mrs. Carlos
Castaneda
"Chandra
probably thought longer and deeper about our universe than anyone since
Einstein."
Martin Rees,
Great Britain's Astronomer Royal |
